US hacker groups infiltrated by FBI, Secret Service

David Gomez, 7th June 2011

It is estimated 1 in 4 hackers in the US are informants for the FBI and Secret service. Is it crazy to now wonder if Lulz Security and Anonymous are really who they say they are?

An investigation by the Guardian has alleged the underground world of computer hackers is experiencing paranoia and mistrust at bad acid trip-like levels. That’s because it has been thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service.

Wouldn’t it put you on edge if your secret club was infiltrated by some undesirables?

The cyber realm is the new "war on terror" for the Facebook generation. The government pretty much told us this when they said that cyber sabotage is now an "act of war." Some people might think that the cyber realm is the next logical extension of the national security state’s war on those who would harm the US, and that it’s no big deal.

That remains to be seen. All you can say for sure is that the US government is now targeting more groups of people as potential enemies than ever before. It is now infiltrating these social hacking movements with their own operatives.

And it kind of makes you wonder, are they only using informants, or does it go deeper?

Lulz Security and Anonymous are two examples of hacker groups getting a lot of mainstream attention. They are both secretive hacker groups, and they have both targeted the US government over actions related to their digital authoritarianism.

When I say does it go deeper I mean: can we really believe everything that we are told about Lulz Security and Anonymous now that we know that the US government is infiltrating hacker groups?

And is the government only using snitches to rat people out, or are they deceiving the public by making the hacker threat look worse than it is?

I try to avoid sounding like that guy, but honestly would it shock you?

If you’ve been paying attention at all over the last 11 years then you know that we have been lied to by the media elite about the wars in the Middle East, the economy and now the threat of cyber terrorism.

They want us to believe that we are sitting ducks if we don’t clamp down authoritarian style on the digital realm. We don’t let the mighty government protect cyberspace from digital meanies who will?

More than anything these scares over hacking are due to the fact that they are social movements that are actually having a small bit of success. They haven’t changed anything yet, but they are getting attention.

And these when you take people’s focus away from Oz and direct it towards the man behind the curtain, that makes you a target.

We don’t know a whole lot about groups like Lulz Security and Anonymous. Are they social activists using a new medium of protest, or are they super villains with bad intentions?

No one knows. But like all governments, the US government LOVES to use disinformation. And now that we know that the FBI and Secret Service are putting their people in hacking groups, it doesn’t seem that crazy to think that some of these recent hacking adventures could be the work of people on the US government's secret payroll.